In December 1944, German forces in the western theater were under the command of Oberbefehlshaber West (OB West) headed by Generalfeldmarshall Gerd von Rundstedt. Generalfeldmarshall Walter Model’s Heeresgruppe B controlled three field armies from the North Sea to the area around Nancy in Lorraine, and Heeresgruppe G directed the three field armies from Lorraine southwards through Alsace to the Swiss frontier. One of its three field armies, Manteuffel’s 5. Panzerarmee, was transferred out of Heeresgruppe G in November 1944 for the Ardennes offensive.
Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz, commander of Heeresgruppe G during Operation Nordwind. (NARA)
During the summer of 1944, Heeresgruppe G had been commanded by Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz who was relieved on September 21 due to Hitler’s displeasure over the high cost of the retreat from southern and central France. He was replaced by General der Panzertruppe Hermann Balck, who had been commanding 4. Panzerarmee on the Eastern Front. Balck was one of the best known Panzer commanders of the Eastern Front and he had been elevated from corps to army command only at the beginning of August. His rise was unusually rapid and was part of Hitler’s effort to reinvigorate key command positions in the west with an infusion of young blood from the east. Balck did not show any particular aptitude for infantry warfare in the Vosges Mountains and he was on the wrong side of the argument with AOK 19 commander Wiese over French operations in November. The French penetration of the Belfort Gap and the capture of Strasbourg undermined Hitler’s confidence in him. The disappointing performance of Heeresgruppe G in November and December 1944 led to substantial command changes from army group to corps level.
General der Infanterie Hans von Obstfelder, commander of AOK 1 during Operation Nordwind. (MHI)
The first to go was the AOK 1 commander, Otto von Knobelsdorf. He was unhappy with the lack of Panzer support provided for his army during the fighting for the Saverne Gap in November, and at the end of the month he had complained vigorously about the extent of transfers from his command to support the forthcoming Ardennes offensive. When he reported that he was ill on December 2, Rundstedt used this as an excuse to relieve him, and General der Infanterie Hans von Obstfelder was his replacement. Obstfelder had served during World War I in France and was a Hauptmann (captain) by the war’s end. Obstfelder was in command of 28. Infanterie-Division during the 1939 Polish campaign; he was promoted to General der Infanterie on June 1, 1940 leading 29. AK (XXIX Armee Korps) in France in 1940 and in southern Russia, including the fighting in the Caucasus and the Mius river campaign in 1941/42. He was transferred to lead 86. AK on August 25, 1943, which was originally part of AOK 1 in southern France, but which was transferred to Normandy during the summer of 1944 where it was encircled in the Falaise Pocket.
Oberstgruppenführer Paul Hausser, one of the few experienced senior Waffen-SS commanders on the Western Front, was brought in on January 23 to clean up the mess created by Himmler with his disruptive Heeresgruppe Oberrhein headquarters in the midst of the collapse of the Colmar Pocket. (NARA)
The fall of Strasbourg on November 23 infuriated Hitler, and the capture of a bridge over the Saar River by the US 395th Infantry led to another outburst. This river crossing was significant because it compromised the Westwall defensive belt, and Hitler demanded an immediate inquiry. The first to fall victim to Hitler’s tirade was Balck’s chief of staff, Generalmajor F. W. von Mellenthin on December 5, but a “witch-hunt” ensued which eventually claimed more senior commanders in a few weeks’ time. The next affair to roil Heersgruppe G was triggered by intrigue in Berlin. Since the July 1944 bomb plot against Hitler, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had been involved in a series of power grabs to assert more control over the army. Since most of the coup plotters had been in the Ersatzheer (Replacement Army), Himmler engineered a takeover of this command. The growing importance of his Waffen-SS and control over the Ersatzheer whetted his appetite for greater power over the rest of the armed forces. The fall of Strasbourg provided the pretext, and a scheme was floated in November to establish an Upper Rhine High Command (Oberkommando Oberrhein) to direct the defense of the Colmar Pocket and to retake Strasbourg. The proposed command was extremely unusual in that it reported directly to Berlin and would not be subordinate to Rundstedt’s Western Front command. In the event, the new command was established as Heeresgruppe Oberrhein and it took over control of AOK 19 from Heeresgruppe G as well as units of the Ersatzheer in the neighboring Wehrkreis V (Military District V). Himmler was formally given control of the new command on December 10. He had absolutely no military command experience, and his tenure as Heeresgruppe Oberrhein commander would prove to be a source of endless aggravation for the army commanders in the sector. One German commander described Himmler’s military understanding as “childish.”
General der Infanterie Friedrich Wiese, commander of AOK 19 until late December 1944 when he was sacked by Himmler. (MHI)
Within days of his appointment, Himmler traveled to Alsace to monitor the progress of defensive operations against the French attacks on the Colmar Pocket. A Tunisian detachment had captured the Hohneck, the highest peak in the High Vosges on the night of December 3/4. Himmler became fixated on this minor skirmish and concocted a scheme to recapture the mountain peak, melodramatically codenamed Operation Habicht (hawk). On December 12, Himmler visited the headquarters of the 189. Infanterie-Division in Wintzenheim where he encountered the AOK 19 commander, General der Infanterie Friedrich Wiese, who was supervising the operation. The attack on Hohneck failed, and Himmler decided that Wiese was insufficiently ardent in his task. He was relieved a week later and replaced by General der Infanterie Siegfried Rasp, an officer with few conspicuous qualifications for the task. Rasp had served primarily as a divisional or army staff officer through August 1943 when he was assigned to command the 3. Gebirgsdivision; this lasted two weeks and he was transferred to the 335. Infanterie-Division which saw heavy fighting in southern Russia until it was destroyed near Kishniev in August 1944 shortly after Rasp had been transferred. He led the reconstruction of the 78. Sturm-Division, which had been annihilated by the Red Army’s summer 1944 offensive, but he was transferred to another staff post before the unit was again committed to the front. He had only been elevated from the rank of Generalleutnant earlier in December. His sudden rise to field army command suggests that Himmler wanted a less experienced and more pliant commander who would not question his orders as Wiese did during the Hohneck affair. The actual military leadership of Heeresgruppe Oberrhein remains obscure; French accounts suggest that Himmler appointed the World War I hero and SS stalwart, 64-year-old Obergruppenführer Heinrich von Maur as his main military adviser.
The final command change in Heeresgruppe G was the top position, and Balck was relieved on December 23. The change was not particularly surprising given Hitler’s aggravation over the loss of Strasbourg and Balck’s failure to prevent a penetration of the formidable High Vosges barrier. In his place returned Johannes Blaskowitz, who had been replaced by Balck only two months before. He was no favorite of Hitler’s. His return was engineered by his old comrade, Gerd von Rundstedt, who wanted a reliable hand in command of Heeresgruppe G, especially now that Wehrmacht control was being poached by “former chicken farmer” Himmler with his disruptive Oberrhein command.
Blaskowitz was born in East Prussia in 1883, not from a traditional military family but as the son of a Lutheran minister. He served in the infantry in World War I and remained in the Reichswehr after the war, advancing in rank and becoming a Generalmajor in October 1932. He was apolitical but strongly nationalistic, so his career continued to advance after the rise of the Nazis. General Günther Blumentritt later recalled that he was “rigorously just and high-minded … with a strong spiritual and religious turn of mind.” This would not serve him well with the Nazis. Blaskowitz led the Eighth Army during the invasion of Poland, fighting the most intense battle of the campaign during the Polish counterattack on the Bzura River and the subsequent siege of Warsaw. In the wake of the campaign, he complained about the atrocities against Poles and Jews by the SS. Hitler dismissed his complaints about SS brutality as “childish ideas” and Blaskowitz was sidetracked to occupation duty in France instead of being assigned to a major command slot in the Russian campaign. He commanded AOK 1 on the Bay of Biscay for most of the war, a sleepy backwater by Wehrmacht standards. Although not favored in Berlin, he retained Rundstedt’s confidence and in May 1944 Blaskowitz was placed in command of Heeresgruppe G.
The command situation at corps level was more stable than at higher levels, with only one of the five corps commanders in Heeresgruppe G removed in December. The 89. AK commander, General Werner von und zu Gilsa, was relieved on November 23 when his headquarters was overrun in Saverne by the tanks of the French 2e Division Blindée. Although he escaped, Balck replaced him with General Gustav Höhne, an experienced Eastern Front commander. The remainder were all veteran Eastern Front commanders, most of whom had been assigned during the autumn of 1944.
The 6th Army Group and Seventh US Army were the “red-haired stepchildren” of the US Army in Europe. Eisenhower and his SHAEF (Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force) headquarters generally treated the 6th Army Group operations as an afterthought, and relations between the senior commands were strained.
Lieutenant-General Jacob “Jake” Devers was the 6th Army Group commander. A classmate of George Patton’s at West Point, he spent most of his early career in the field artillery. He was stationed in Hawaii in 1917/18, and as a result saw no combat duty during World War I. His assignments in the interwar years included teaching posts at West Point and a stint with the Army G-3 (Operations) Office of Artillery in Washington, where he had his first contacts with the future Army chief of staff, George C. Marshall. At the outbreak of World War II in 1939 he was chief of staff of the Canal Zone (Panama). He had developed a reputation as an excellent organizer and in October 1940 he was assigned to create one of the army’s main new training bases at Fort Bragg by General Marshall, becoming the Army’s youngest major-general. When the pioneer of the US tank force, Major-General Adna Chaffee, became ill in 1941, Devers was transferred to lead the Armored Force on August 1, 1941. His superior performance in this demanding assignment reinforced Marshall’s confidence in him and in May 1943 he was assigned to lead ETOUSA (European Theater of Operations, United States Army). This command in Britain was responsible for building up the US Army in preparation for the eventual landings in France in 1944. While his rank and experience made Devers a contender for senior US field commands in the 1944 campaigns, his prospects were hobbled by several factors. Unlike other candidates such as Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, George Patton, and Mark Clark, he had no combat experience. He also proved to be less adept at the political aspects of senior command, and, unlike Eisenhower, he was not especially liked by Churchill or other key British officials. He also managed to alienate Eisenhower on several occasions in 1943, refusing various requests for troop dispositions from the ETO to the Mediterranean theater while Eisenhower was in charge of the Italian campaign.
A portrait photograph of Gen. Jacob Devers after the war; Devers received his fourth star at the end of March 1945. (NARA)
Maj. Gen. Wade Haislip, XV Corps commander, had originally served under Patton’s command in Normandy and in the race to the Seine before his corps was shifted to the Seventh Army in the autumn of 1944. (NARA)
There was really no contest for the position of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, which went to Eisenhower due to his far more extensive experience and his broad support not only among American commanders, but amongst senior British leaders, especially Churchill. Devers was never considered for a place in Eisenhower’s coterie of senior commanders, who came mostly from Ike’s Mediterranean theater veterans. Nevertheless, Devers’ sterling performance in administrative commands left Marshall indebted to him and confident of his leadership abilities. When Marshall was finally able to push through the Operation Dragoon plan for the amphibious landings in southern France, Devers was the obvious pick. The French had mooted the idea of a French commander for the 6th Army Group, a notion that was rejected out of hand by both the US and British chiefs of staff. The 6th Army Group was activated in September 1944 following the successful conclusion of the Operation Dragoon landings in southern France.
Relations between Devers and Eisenhower were strained, due in no small measure to Eisenhower’s personal dislike of Devers. Ike and his inner circle such as Bradley often disparaged Devers as “.22 caliber,” an allusion to the small-caliber rifles given to teenage American boys for target practice. The animosity was misplaced given the 6th Army Group’s exemplary track record since the August Operation Dragoon landings, and the challenges Devers faced in coordinating the activities of his joint US–French command. The sterling performance of Major-General Patch’s Seventh Army in overcoming the Vosges in November stands in marked contrast to the performance of Bradley and Hodges in the Hürtgen forest, and the 6th Army Group had a far better measure of their Wehrmacht opponent, as was evident in comparing the intelligence failure in the Ardennes with the intelligence success in Nordwind.
VI Corps commander, Maj. Gen. Edward Brooks is seen briefing SHAEF commander Dwight Eisenhower at 6th Army Group headquarters during the Alsace fighting; Patch is behind him. Brooks had previously commanded the 2nd Armored Division in Normandy until sent to Alsace in October 1944 to fill in for Lucian Truscott. (MHI)
The two components of Devers’ 6th Army Group were the Seventh US Army and the 1ère Armée. The Seventh US Army was led by Lieutenant-General Alexander “Sandy” Patch. He was born at Fort Huachuca in the Arizona territory, the son of a 4th Cavalry Regiment officer, and graduated from West Point in 1913. He served in Pershing’s Mexican Expedition in 1916 and commanded an infantry battalion in France in 1918. In 1942/43, Patch led the Americal Division and later XIV Corps during the Army’s first major offensive campaign on Guadalcanal. Patch returned to the United States to train the new IV Corps, which was sent to the Mediterranean in early 1944. Seventh Army had been commanded by General George S. Patton during Operation Husky on Sicily in the summer of 1943, but Patton was transferred to England in January 1944 to command Third Army under Eisenhower. Patch was not especially favored by either Marshall or Eisenhower, but he was championed by Eisenhower’s chief of staff, General Walter Bedell Smith, and highly regarded by Devers as well. The combination of Devers and Patch proved to be an excellent match.
Lt. Gen. Alexander “Sandy” Patch was commander of the Seventh US Army. (NARA)
The senior 1ère Armée commander was the talented and flamboyant Général Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. He graduated from Saint Cyr in 1911 and saw extensive combat in World War I, being wounded four times including a nearly fatal lance wound to the chest during a cavalry skirmish. Like many ambitious French officers of the postwar army, he transferred to North Africa and took part in the pacification campaigns there. In 1931, he was posted to the general staff under General Weygand; his rival for the post was Charles de Gaulle. He led the 14e Division d’Infanterie in the battle of France in 1940, which put up a spirited defense near Rethel. De Lattre was not captured by the Germans but due to his loyalty to Weygand, he decided to remain in France rather than join de Gaulle’s Free French movement abroad. He served in the Vichy French Armistice Army in metropolitan France and Tunisia, siding with anti-German factions. De Lattre was arrested by the Vichy government in November 1942 after the Wehrmacht occupied Vichy France but in September 1943 he broke out of prison and escaped to Britain. De Gaulle recognized his talent and dispatched him to Algeria to help raise the expanding French army there, commanding Army B, the core of the later 1ère Armée. As a preliminary operation, de Lattre led the capture of Elba on June 17, 1944 by a combined force of the Royal Navy and French troops. De Lattre had displayed remarkable bravery on the battlefield and was a perceptive and talented commander. He had a theatrical and demanding personality that rivaled that of other prima donnas of World War II like Patton and MacArthur. He was extremely energetic and mercilessly micromanaged his corps and divisional commanders. In his diary, Devers recalled that de Lattre would fly off on a tirade about twice a week. Devers employed former senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. as his liaison with de Lattre on account of his fluent French and his tactful diplomatic skills. Although the 6th Army Group staff found de Lattre difficult to work with, they concluded that it was probably even worse for his French staff who called him “le roi Jean,” or King John.
Allied commanders celebrate the reduction of the Colmar Pocket in February 1945. Here, Gén. Jean de Lattre de Tassigny congratulates Maj. Gen. Frank Milburn who led XXI Corps, the principal US formation in the operation. To the left is Major-General Norman Cota, commander of the badly battered 28th Division which had fought in the Hürtgen forest and the approaches to Bastogne before being transferred to the Seventh Army for the Comar operation. (NARA)
The senior French and American commanders at the Belfort lion monument. From left to right, Gén. Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, commander of the 1ère Armée; Gen. Jacob Devers, commander of the 6th Army Group, Général M. E. Bethuouard, commander of the French I Corps; and Général Joseph de Goislard de Monsabert, commander of the French II Corps. (NARA)
Relations between the senior American and French commanders within the 6th Army Group were about as good as could be expected. The ambiguous relationship of the French Army with senior Allied commands was the source of inevitable friction, and the French dependence on American material support was a source of endless frustration and misunderstanding on both sides. The French were not fully represented in senior Allied command organizations such as the Combined Chiefs of Staff, and de Lattre’s loyalty was inevitably torn between the military necessity to obey commands from Devers along with the political necessity to recognize the demands of de Gaulle’s provisional government in France. As will be detailed later, this issue came to a head over the fate of Strasbourg in January 1945.
The French command had its share of internal antagonisms, most notably the breach between Gaullist stalwarts like Général Jacques Leclerc of the 2e Division Blindée and the 1ère Armée commanders. Leclerc had been with de Gaulle from the outset and regarded the senior 1ère Armée commanders as a bunch of opportunists who switched sides out of convenience rather than conviction. Many of the senior 1ère Armée commanders regarded Leclerc as an upstart captain who had seen a rapid rise in rank solely on account of his political connections. The animosity between both factions was bitter enough that the US Army found it prudent to keep Leclerc’s 2e Division Blindée away from the 1ère Armée, and so it served under an American corps command through most of the campaign.